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23

I wonder if we could get Jeff to comment on the status of badge requests.
–
jjnguyJul 9 '09 at 13:26

2

I, too, wonder if we could get @Jeff Atwood to comment on the status of badge requests.
–
RandolphoApr 14 '10 at 13:34

3

@Randolpho: I'm pretty sure that @ thing only works for names of people have actually spoken somewhere above your comment...
–
SamBApr 15 '10 at 18:34

119 Answers
119

We can have a badge called Bounty Hunter which will be given to a user who has answered some threshold number of bounty questions. Similar badges can be given if a user has asked some threshold number of bounty questions.

Pointing out that an answer is wrong, is potentially more important than indicating the one correct answer is better than another correct answer. I don't think down votes should necessarily be discouraged.
–
SpoonMeiserJun 28 '09 at 14:31

Specialist Badges - Bronze
Lasted 15 days in the 30-day top 20 answerers list for a specific tag.

Probably should require x number of questions posted in the same time frame to prevent gaining the badge on tags that only have a few posts.

Survivalist
Lasted 30 days in the 30-day top 20 answerers list for any tag.

They're the same badge, except if it were implemented as a specialist badge you could earn one per tag. I wasn't sure if Jeff wanted bronze specialist badges however, so Survivalist is intended as an alternative.

The intent is to distinguish the editing of answers from providing supportive and helpful comments. Editor and Strunk&White, IIRC, can be attained simply by editing your own posts. In addition not everyone has the rep to edit other people's answers. ...just a thought that there should be a distinction.

For example: SO question 2211388/serialize-object-to-xml-problems
I may know the answer, but there is an answer with a good start. Sure, I'll up-vote it (or at least I should). Then, instead of competing for the accepted answer, possibly duplicating most of the already up-voted answer and embellishing with some campaign style code snippets, I support the one already there.

I think this encouragement could produce higher quality answers. The downside to this, obviously, is how it could be implemented. I hope my explanation makes sense.

One possible implementation could be an icon only visible or click-able by the OP (?), or an additional option in the flag that tags the comment as supportive and collaborative.

Kitten-saver Someone has asked a question and put their own answer on it within five minutes of asking. You come along with a better answer, and they accept yours rather than their own. Therefore you're preventing God from killing a kitten. Alternatively it could be awarded for preventing someone from parsing HTML with regular expressions.

Monopolist

Received a golden tag badge for a particular tag while no one else has received a silver tag badge for particular tag yet. Or at least someting in those lines. It should award valuable contributors in "niche" tags who doesn't collect enough voteless answers to qualify for Unsung Hero and Tireless and like so.

I kind of like this, but at the same time I don't ever see it implemented. It's one of those first come, first serve ideas that reward being the first prominent member on the site to be interested in a particular tag. Anyone who joins after you gain the first silver can't get the badge even if you've lost interest.
–
Andy EJul 26 '10 at 18:29

1

@Andy: Fair point. The tag criteria should maybe be revised. Percentage of votes/answers/accepts as opposed to the amount of questions and the votes/answers/accepts others received in the particular tag during the period you were active?
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BalusCJul 26 '10 at 18:36

I'd like to see the 'Strunk & White' badge extended to reward those who edit and improve answers. The difficulty is working out whether the editing is just for getting the badge, or whether it is genuinely improving the questions and answers. (Clearly, editing your own entries wouldn't count.)

I'm not sure what to call it - Strunk & White sets a rather high standard to start out with. And I'm not sure whether to make S&W a badge awarded multiple times - say on 100 edits, and then every 1000 after that, or whether to find a new name (Super Editor? Vim or Emacs - at the recipients choice? Nitpicker?) that is awarded every 1000 edits or so.

I'm not sure the exact specifics of this mechanism, but I've seen/had happened to me before where an answer is accepted, then unaccepted, then another answer was accepted in its place.

I think there should be a badge for "stealing" acceptance in this manner.

Note that this "stealing" has nothing to do with plagiarism. It's about improving an accepted answer with another answer that's even better. Sometimes I suspect that if a question already has an accepted answer with a few votes, even if it can be improved upon, people don't bother (perhaps because they don't think it'd be as rewarding because they're "too late"). Having this badge would encourage people to always try to come up with the best answers possible, regardless of whether or not there's already a decent one accepted or not.